


Blink

by Melanie_D_Peony



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Blood, Cuddling & Snuggling, Gore, Heavy Angst, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, Mind the Tags, Not Beta Read, Post-Apocalypse, Rough Kissing, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23557828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melanie_D_Peony/pseuds/Melanie_D_Peony
Summary: It's the end of the world and it's all your fault.You are but a Ritual by know.But you are also an Archivist. And it's your duty to cancel Rituals.And you will stop at nothing to do just that.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 12
Kudos: 60





	Blink

**Author's Note:**

> This is a work of fan fiction. The author does not own anything.

It's midnight and, peeking through the curtains, you watch the Ceaseless Watcher watching you. 

You stare and will for it to blink. 

It's midnight because you said so. Because timekeeping has become futile. And it's midnight because it always is at the final hour. 

It's midnight and you lose the staring contest once again. 

You let the checkered curtain fall back to its place, sheltering the kitchen window. The _drip drip_ of the leaky tap is yet another torture device. The cutlet knife gives a glinting, metallic wink beside you and you pick it up and debate its weight against the depression between your radius and ulna. Say whatever you want about Daisy, but she kept her crockery in a pristine condition. The blade licks hungrily at your vein. 

You told Martin that your favourite tape is the one with Gertrude addressing the future Archivist. He thought you were merely wallowing in the cruel irony of it. 

You did not correct him.

Looking up, estimating the necessary degree of force, you think about that Eye beyond the curtain. 

Your grip on life has always been a tad lose, you remind yourself. You forever felt like a changeling in the company of your own flesh and blood. Though it's not surprising. The woman who brought you up did not vouch to be your mother and in a secret, deep, dark fold of her heart, she regarded you as a changeling too. Her boy was taken and she was left with you. A screeching little cuckoo, always hungry for something she couldn't give. Is it surprising that you'd developed a taste for grief? It's what sustained you for the first decades of your life. 

So you made yourself home in derelict feelings and you carried melancholy on your sleeves, proud, like it was a stupid little merit badge. You regarded yourself as a tragedy waiting to happen, ever since you could remember. You still feel a shred of resentment for the teenage boy who saved you. Not because he was a bully. That part felt deserved, an appropriate exposition for a drama in the making. No, you were, _still are_ , jealous of him. He stole the ending intended for you. 

You were never meant to become a plot device. All you've ever wanted to be was a regrettable little footnote. 

_You are a ritual,_ Gertrude said. God, you wish she was right.

You look up where the presence of the Eye is burning a hole in the innocent little blinds with their red tartan designs. It made a mistake when forgetting a crucial thing about protagonists - they get to choose the sacrifice. 

It doesn't want to harm you, you proposed.

 _So this should make you fucking blink._ you think.

And the tip of the blade is pushing down and the sudden fountain of blood almost feels supernatural in its abundance. In the darkness of the kitchen you bleed ink like a statement. 

There's a muffled cry emerging from the bedroom and it disperses the dark spell. The knife loses its purpose, its urgency and it never reaches its final resting place, buried deep within the abyss of your arteries. You let it tumble in the sink with a metallic crescendo and you are busy stuffing paper towels in your wound. Like it's all but a stupid accident. _Look at what you've done, butterfingers. Now clean up, would you?_

You make it to the bedroom in a state reminiscent of a trance _._ Martin writhes and jerks in the bed like he is something lost at sea. You hover at the threshold of the room. You can not wake him, you know, you tried. You are useless here, being merely what you've always been, a mean spirited little voyeur, baring silent witness to the pain you yield. But you've crossed the room by them and you are palming his wet cheek in a hollow gesture of sympathy anyway.

You know what he is dreaming about. You are privy to his deepest fears, as to everybody else's and you are suddenly ashamed of the ghost of that dark, wet patch below the heel of your hand, hovering near Martin's face as you caress his skin. Weighed by guilt and exhaustion you rest your head on the broad chest below you, believing that there's no danger of waking him. But Martin unexpectedly stirs underneath the press of your body and he utters your name in a sleep hazy sigh. He must catch a whiff of the metallic scent then and he smudges his thumb in a trickle of blood as he reaches to wrap his hand around your fingers on his cheek. You make an instinctive little groan of pain, as you feel knuckles bumping into your fresh wound, that you instantly regret. But it's too late to stuff your wrist between your teeth now, Martin is already sitting up, fiddling for the small lamp on the nightstand. Despite having its own generator, the safehouse had no electricity for days, with currents and voltages turning out to be one of humanity's less reliable amenities. But somehow there's a warm, intimate glow filling the room as Martin flicks the switch on. 

'Jon…?' There's an inquisitive infliction in his voice as he draws your arm in his lap. Anger, like a slow moving cyclone, overtakes his features as he contemplates the nature and the meaning of your wound. Deep down you know that he's not mad at you, that it's helplessness furrowing his brows, but it doesn't make the regret any less palpable. When he kicks off the comforters you don't expect him to come back, so you are startled when he drops his weight and the sturdy first aid box beside you. You concentrate on the warmth of his thigh, flush against yours as he huffs his way through the assorted set of plasters and medicines, like he is personally affronted by them somehow. You are hesitant to offer him your wrist when he lifts his hand for it expectantly, which melts his glower into a tender expression.

'Jon.' He pleads and that is somehow even worse, so you thrust your arm hurriedly out. You look like a twig in his clutch. 

There's nothing much being said while he tends to your cut. The aspirin in the box has long outlived its shelf life, but the gauze and the rubbing alcohol have no expiry date. His nursing is skilled, that's something you've all became experts in, working in the Archives. You purse your lips as he clears the scar and you brace yourself for the confrontation. You aren't planning on backing down. But when he seals the plaster he simply places a feather light, barely there kiss on it. The next one is more forceful, smudged against your calloused palm. The one after is in the crook of your elbow, against the thin skin and the lost rivers of your blood vessels. You lean haplessly in the one that caresses your throat, your free arm twining around Martin's shoulder almost against your will. You are placed in his lap by now, draped over his thighs. The kisses continue and while you shudder with pleasure, Martin shakes underneath you for a completely different reason.

'I really thought you'd understand by now.' His words are muffled against your collarbone and his chest fills with a desperate sigh, curving against the concave of yours. 'That you can tell me anything.' 

You pull back, far enough to seek his eyes out.

'I'm not despairing, Martin.' 

'Of course not.' He snaps a little, sinking his teeth in his lip in momentary regret where can't swallow his words instead.

'I'm not much happier about this than you are.' You let your forehead sink against his. 'But Rituals must be ended. There isn't any other logical solution.'

Martin's hands against your shoulder blade somehow seem to ease your dread. It grounds you like nothing else has ever had. It's because of the way he can squeeze tea from a stone if need be, summon comfort out thin air. You are still getting accustomed to the fact that you don't have to apologise for your existence around him. That love can be, should be alleviating. 

You simply want to return the favour. 

'I can't be selfish about this.' You whisper as you plant a minute kiss on Martin's cheek. The hands on your back convulse, fisting your shirt. Your clothes feel wet where he presses his face into them.

'No, but I can. Please, Jon. Don't.'

And it's weird how you become dependent on life, how willing you suddenly are to make an appearance on the pages for once, just because Martin gently beckons you to leave margin, the sidenotes and be part of your own story. The feeling of someone telling you not to make yourself sparse is addictive. All this time you thought it was all about Beholding. 

But maybe it's more important to be simply held. 

Doesn't mean that you are not ever so slightly disgusted by the relief you feel. 

Meanwhile Martin looks up to you, face wavering with grief but also looking determined.

'You are rushing into this.' He says sternly, his effort to stay composed is palpable where his hot breath rushes against your chest. Martin always struggled to keep the clinical distance of a true academic when dissecting the personal traumas people brought to the Institute. Probably, because he'd never been an academic. 'Even if you end the Watcher's Crown, there will be fourteen more fears on the loose, remember. We need to really think this through, not just clutch at straws. Knowledge is still power and you have the power to know everything.' 

'I am aware.' You sigh, defeated. But Martin must feel that the victory came too easily, because he presses on.

'I can't really see how else are we to deal with this mess and we have no concrete evidence that ending the ritual will reverse the whole process. So until then it's everybody's best interest that you live, Jon.' 

'I'm not going to do it, Martin.' You say, your voice slow but deliberate to put a cork in the nervous words bubbling up from him in an unstoppable torrent. God, will this clumsy dancing around tough subjects ever stop? Knowing yourself, it probably won't. The more you want to save him, the more your hurt him. But if you were to say things out loud they'd sound trifle, trivialised.

'Good, Jon.' He finally relaxes in your arm. 'Because the world needs you more than ever.' 

Then, pushing his face back into your chest, almost as if to hide the self indulgent little whine, he adds.

'I need you.' 

Your trace your hand through his hair and wrap your fingers around some locks. You are overwhelmed with how much you want to keep him safe and comfortable and reasonably happy, to make him feel the same kind of fuzzy contentment he makes you feel. The enveloping warmth of it that is just so perfectly soothing. It's not a high octane kind of raw sensation, rather something that fills you from the inside out. It sounds lame, when put like this; there's no way of expressing how perfectly safe he is for you, how he provides the exact kind of love that someone starved like you needs. You'll probably never be the right person for a human being so beautiful, but hell, you are too greedy to really concern yourself with that. 

Ever so gently you tug on Martin's hair to make him look up at you.

'I won't do it,' you repeat, staring in his eyes as you shift your position to properly straddle his lap. 'but not because of some sort of Fear God.' 

You press a kiss inside his mouth, you pour everything in there that you fail to tell with words. 

'And not for the sake of humanity of some bollocks like that.' You add, coming up for air, wondering if Martin feels so unbecoming by the kiss like you do. He is fighting desperately to pull you back together, but actually, he is taking you apart in the most pleasurable ways possible.

'But because you asked me to.' You pant your confession against his mouth.

'You need a better reason than that, Jon.' He laughs shakily into the very near contact. 

'It will suffice for now.' 

And there is no more talk of monsters that night and your thoughts never shift back to the knife in the sink. 

And you also momentarily forget about the Eye in the sky. And you are too busy to notice, but that seems to make it shift out of existence for one brief second. 

Almost as if in a blink.

**Author's Note:**

> P.S. This is not supposed to be too dark, I was simply exploring a thought that must have crossed Jon's mind at some point - if he is so quintessential to the Watcher's Crown, then he can probably utilise that influence somehow. This is just my ramblings about why the podcast wouldn't really go there.


End file.
